GST: Seven states yet to pass legislation for 1 July rollout, six of them non-BJP led

New Delhi: With less than a month left for GST rollout, seven states, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir, are yet to pass their legislations required for implementing the new indirect tax regime.

So far, 24 states and Union Territories, including Delhi, Odisha and Puducherry, have passed the State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) Act in their respective legislative assemblies.

Baring Jammu and Kashmir where BJP is an alliance partner of PDP, all are non-BJP ruled states.

The government plans to roll out the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which will subsume 16 different taxes, from 1 July.

West Bengal wants the Centre to delay roll out of the GST by a month and the issue was raised by state Finance Minister Amit Mitra at the meeting of the GST Council last week.

Mitra said that implementation of the GST from 1 July will have “serious problems” as the IT infrastructure required to manage GST’s returns and invoice uploading are not in place.

“So far, GSTN has been able to do test drive on 200-300 companies in each state. Forms and rules have been changed in May. The (Union) finance minister has to decide whether it should go ahead with the biggest fiscal reform when the IT preparedness is not 100 percent,” Mitra had said.

As per the GST Constitutional amendment, all states have to pass SGST bills by 15 September, 2017, failing which they will lose their taxation powers.